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I was going to voice disappointment but I wouldn't have bought it for 70€ anyway.

I'm going to challenge this a bit because I think too many people get hung up on dates when it comes to history. But honestly that is super low on the list of what is needed to understand historical events. What really needs to be focused on is the order of the events and the cause and effect. Sorry, it's just I'm constantly drilling into my students how unimportant it is that they managed to rote memorize a bunch of dates. It means nothing if you don't understand how we got there and what the impact was. So yeah, it's your engineering education.

Wife thinks Beyonce is better than Mary J Blige. Hopefully we can get through this.

all I can say is I would not have been disappointed.

That'd be a fun P&P RPG shirt.

I know this is really old, but I just have to say ... this is (short) me vs. (tall) husband. His arms are stupidly long and it is so unfair.

Well, *I* bought a Subaru Crosstrek 2.5L. ...did look at others with similar sizing/shape but just like 23 years ago, Subaru is seemingly only co. making cars like I want. I'm no speed/sportster driver but I cannot go back to the 1.5L type cars or whatever, especially w/an Automatic. And I hate trunks. ...unlike 23 years ago, we just wrote a check. 🥳 ...I'm going to hate all the computer crap of modern cars but oh well times are what they are. At least this one still has a manual parking brake, ffs. ...most importantly, the sales dude was a tall geeky fellow who saw my Pillars of Eternity t-shirt and thus we were talking games, tech, and gpu shortages during waiting moments.

Firefox completely ate my edited response, so here's some bullet points: Estocs and Arquebuses exclusively deal Pierce damage, which is the most frequent physical damage immunity. I'd recommend backup weapons like a Morning Star: it deals best of Crush/Pierce and the Body Blows modal (-25 FOR) rocks with Garrote since it targets that defense. The unique Estoc Engoliero do Espirs has some value since it can trigger AoE Ghost Blades, which translates to Hobbled, which will trigger Steel Garrote's health recovery VS afflicted enemies. Speaking of Garrote, you'll want to use it carefully since it costs 2 Zeal and completely whiffs against enemies resistant or immune to DEX afflictions (the Paralyze component has to connect). There's a mod floating around the Deadfire Nexus that reduces the cost to 1, if you are inclined. I wouldn't mix ranged and melee weapons generally. You'll spread your choices thin (there's a hat that works with two-handed melee and one that works with ranged weapons, for example). There is some slight synergy with Two-Handed style since they both count as two-handed weapons, though. For RP, you could consider the soulbound Mace Magistrate's Cudgel (binds with Monk) and the unique Club Shattered Vengeance as they are Woedican weapons. These would free your off-hand for Tulotilo's Palm, which is an awesome small shield that also functions as Fist-type weapon and offers valuable Monk enhancements. Nalpazca is a good choice but the micro-management may not be to your liking. There's a lot of travel in Deadfire so you'll need to reapply Drugs on the regular: this can be frustrating after certain scripted encounters or during boarding battles since you'll need to take a Drug in the thick of it. (Make sure to disable AI when using items since their behaviors will override consumable usage.) Combine Nalpazca with Enduring Dance and you'll be swimming in Wounds. Tread carefully against enemy Wizards since they can cause you to crash prematurely via Arcane Dampener or Arcane Cleanse - Risen Wizards seem to always open with Dampener so consider having your main tank soak it and move on. Abilities to consider: Monk Lightning Strikes/Swift Flurry: I like using the former for two-handed weapons (big damage packets) and the latter when dual-wielding (more opportunities to Crit). Clarity of Agony: A useful counter versus Arcane Dampener (but not Cleanse). Raised Torment: The AoE Stun works well on an off-tank and counts as an Affliction, again triggering Steel Garrote's heal on afflicted enemy passive. It's good to have a Wound spender, too. Enduring Dance: Awesome Wound generation and ACC bonus. Flagellant's Path: You can never go wrong with a teleport. This isn't something you'll want to use all the time but it's useful for repositioning. Thunderous Blows: +5 MIG and +2 PEN. The bonus PEN is mandatory on PoTD. Turning Wheel: +1 INT and +2% Burn Damage lash per Wound. Note the lash won't work on ranged attacks (the Community Patch fixes this). Skyward Kick: Another Wound spender. It's got some nice flair and style. Paladin Sworn Rival: Bonus damage and returns the Zeal cost when the foe dies. The bonus damage applies to (just about?) everything, including Garrote's DoT (new band name). Shared Flames/Eternal Devotion: Can't go wrong with more ACC. Lay on Hands: Solid healing, especially with the bonus INT from Turning Wheel. The upgrades (more like sidegrades) are nice but mind the additional Zeal cost. Exalted Endurance: Probably the best out of the Paladin Auras since Focus doesn't stack (at least without another certain mod) with other active ACC bonuses. Reviving Exhortation: One of those abilities you'll cringe when picking up but will want to have it just in case. On RP, a Steel Garrote's favored dispositions are Cruel and Rational while disfavored are Diplomatic and Benevolent. In my current Steel Garrote/Forbidden Fist run, I'm playing him as a corrupt lawful evil enforcer type: plays sides as long as he can, sticks to rules when they benefit him, and has no qualms breaking contracts to serve Woedica (as is her domain). A Nalpazca could fit this well since they'll interact with Deadfire's underbelly to get Drugs. There's not many unique dialogues for Steel Garrote, but given your experiences in PoE1, I think you'll be pleased with what is available. Agreed that Forbidden Fist is probably the best Monk class for Steel Garrote multis. Sworn Rival -> Forbidden Fist -> Garrote has a satisfying "You are already dead." appeal. I like to breach through the frontliners using Flagellant's Path, then run around and stun-death casters and archers.

James Hong Is Finally Getting His Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (movieweb.com)

You might consider Forbidden Fist/Steel Garrotte instead. Powerotti published a build for this multiclass that is one of my favorites. Forbidden Fist gives you a powerful ability right at the beginning of the game that inflicts a devastating affliction, enfeebled, one of the few classes that can inflict this. This synergizes perfectly with Steel Garrotte, and gives you even more healing. These two subclasses work together really well IMO.

It's not that surprising because IIRC it started in Galveston, TX. My maternal grandmother is from there so I grew up with it being celebrated in my family but it wasn't a really well known thing just judging by almost everyone I've ever known. It wasn't until I was in the military that I started meeting people that knew about it already. It was then either because of where they were from or the internet.

Waiting for lunch to be served

I can’t help it. I have an engineering education which drives me to be exact. Plus I’m a history snob. Put those two things together and you get the guy that rains on everyone’s parade! 😆

You’re right. Technically it was July 2.You’re right. Technically it was July 2.

I am thinking about buying a hydrogen car. The Toyota Mirai looks sweet and has a ton of promotions around it. I have fueling stations somewhat close to me, amd a bunch near my work, so it might be a good deal. It shouldn't explode like the Hindenberg.

It's accurate for Texas where it originated.

I started watching Overlord season 2 and by god, it really IS incel anime. Season 1 felt much more normal in comparison. Now we have reptile sexytime and stuff like that ...

This looks gorgeous. I felt like watching it as soon as I saw this image. But then I saw the other image.😥 I binge watched AoT's first 2-3 seasons, so I don't remember very well what happens on each one, it is just one thing for me. I didn't care that much for the monologues, but I felt really annoyed by how much they delayed I swore I wouldn't watch any more Picard. But I confess I'm interested. I'm going to hate it anyway. Finally started Legend of Galactic Heroes. I'll post my impressions later.

Sounds like you’re going to work up a hell of a thirst doing that. Believe me you would be much happier if their skulls were filled with a crisp and cold IPA not that thin, bodiless, too sweet Scandinavian crap!

Happy Juneteenth! GD, I'm sure that you already know this but Juneteenth was more of a regional thing celebrating the end of slavery in the South in general and Texas in particular. The holiday was just built on something that was already being celebrated like a lot of other holidays have been before it.

And now for your daily dose of stupid Protecting animals from hate speech

Not enough hate there to feed on. Speaking of hate watching, there's a new teaser trailer for Picard season 2 out now... Time travel, Q and more Jeri Ryan, they're really getting desperate here. This is going to suck so much, and I'll hate to watch it. JoJo really doesn't have any luck using planes, does he? I also lost it when they played Walk Like an Egyptian as the music for the closing credits. Laughed a good five minutes. Such an awesome idea. Wait a moment, that was totally unclear now that I re-read my post, Akira Fudo is the name of the titular Devilman Crybaby in, uhm, Devilman Crybaby. I wasn't talking about the anime film Akira, that one's a classic for a reason and something completely different from Devilman Crybaby. 😮 I saw Beauty and the Beast once in a theater, I think that was a school outing at the time. I don't really recall anything other than the plot and the characters involved. Invincible is still sitting at one watched episode at the moment, which means I'll eventually finish it, but apart from the actually somewhat unexpected twist at the end of the first episode it had nothing that made me want to continue to watch. Except for that voice cast, maybe, but that's not much. Plus it looks terrible. I know you said it gets better, but I'll probably only get back to this once I'm done with everything else. Including the live action Sailor Moon. Not everything modern looks like that though, I've been going through Kill la Kill at a slowish pace in the meantime, and while it also has uncanny CGI to "enhance" the rest of the animation, the character designs are certainly cartoony enough. I also tend to laugh like an idiot while watching it. It's a magical girl ecchi shonen anime, which at first glance makes it sound absolutely terrible, until... yeah until you realize it's not taking itself seriously and is making fun of animes like it that are actually meant to be taken seriously. Everything is so over the top it becomes absurd and absurdly funny through it. Best magical girl transformation scene ever, too: Yeah, just in case that wasn't obvious from what I posted about it, not entirely safe for work. Sure, Barbie doll anatomy in place, but it does have the world famous jiggly boobs.

I'm completely sincere about Devilman Crybaby, it's a great show that works on so many levels. Hugely recommended it to anyone. What I don't recommended as much is AoT, the 2nd season of which I finished. It's still got severe pacing issues, the characters pick the dumbest times to break down or monolog, and to boot big monkey DIO got barely any screen time. Still I'm keeping with it, it's not like Majestic and SMC because I do enjoy it, the best I can liken it to is fast food. You know it's not the best but sometimes you just want to eat a burger. So long space cowboy.

I absolutely think that choice and reactivity is important, but for me how interesting those choices are is more important that how many they are or how much unique content they have. For example there is a big central conflict between two factions in BG3 and I feel there is a right way to proceed. There are few other ways one can handle the situation, but those others are **** paths - and not selfish ****, as if: I am screwing other people over, but it benefits me. Just yolo ****. I intentionally created an evil rogue character, and most of the time I couldn't justify following the evil path.

It's more correct to say that Baldur's Gate was a flagship IP two decades ago. While using Baldurs Gate 3 as the title was an obvious attempt to cash in on nostalgia, I think the big budget is mostly because WotC wanted a big game along with the new TV series to milk the IP. As such they'd probably throw many at anything they thought would be commercially successful, which is unfortunately the Forgotten Realms.

I think its not "your garage door" but "a garage door". Somewhere in the middle of Idaho, there's a guy really pissed off about his garage door opening and closing by itself at random. He crossed Bill Gates once, in 1962. To try to move this away from us continuing to take personal shots at one another, citation only means someone wanted to reference it in their work (we don't know if the citation is to support or refute unless there was somewhere on the linked page to see how it was cited). Peer review has been demonstrated to be a dodgy gatekeeper (see any of the instances where hard scientists troll the soft-science journals with made up nonsense papers using buzzwords and get them published despite supposed peer review). This doesn't mean that the paper has no merits or isn't worth more research to dig deeper into, but I also wouldn't say that my skim through the paper left me convinced by it. Partially this is because I'm a little concerned about the data gathering, but I have to confess its been 20 years since I've had to look at any kind of valid random sampling and don't know how the processes have moved on in the internet age and what kind of validity or skew may be involved. The other part is the data is correlative, which I tend to find worrisome in trying to draw conclusions from since without further random sample study you may be drawing a conclusion based on correlation that isn't actually there. Lines like "PR is strongly correlated (r = .51) with psychopathic personality traits such as a tendency toward angry, impulsive behavior [46]. Accordingly, confronting people who refuse to wear masks could be hazardous. Indeed, there have been media reports of people reacting violently when confronted about not wearing masks." seems worryingly like a conclusion (based on news reports) that someone wanted to back up with data (as there seems to be no mention of media reports of people reacting violently when confronting a person not wearing a mask as that would detract from the paper writers goal). But hey, I'm not a psychologist and my statistics studies are waaaaaaaay behind me.

We know it's Divinity: Original Sin 3 in all but name and setting. That's enough for many people to be disappointed. Many of the friends and acquaintances I have that enjoyed the Baldur's Gate series did not enjoy the D:OS-games all that much. Regardless of whether the game is any good as it is, anyone expecting something even remotely resembling the Baldur's Gate series is going to majorly disappointed, because this ain't it. I'm still baffled by the need to abuse the name of a long completed series and then make a game nothing like it. A game that, from the looks of it, could very well have stood on its own based on Larian's merit, the pedigree of the setting, and the quality of the product that's out there (so far). I really can't help but see this as an ego-trip in that they were allowed to make Baldur's Gate 3. That or a severe case of company-level imposter syndrome, I suppose. To people not having played BG1&2 it doesn't matter. And those that did either don't care, or are mightily annoyed. The entire thing reminds me of Prey, that drama was completely unnecessary and marred the reputation of what was otherwise a great game in the eyes of many and it still gets brought almost every single time Prey is mentioned.

Surprised no conspiracy hack has linked the vaccine to the semiconductor shortage.

I was browsing through some of the Steam early access comments from gamers and I came across this absolutely hilarious post which I had to share " I butchered a group of refugees in cold blood which turned a Drow lady on so much she immediately demanded sex with me. 10/10 " That sounds like something I could be persuaded to do because Drow women are so hot, oh Viconia my love, my life 💘